佛漢．威廉士: 倫敦交響曲 (1913版) 理查．希考克斯 指揮 倫敦交響樂團 Richard Hickox / Vaughan Williams: A London Symphony (Original 1913 version)

理查．希考克斯 指揮 倫敦交響樂團

London Symphony Orchestra
Richard Hickox

佛漢．威廉士的作品善於結合都鐸古調和現代多調火花，運用巨大結塊和弦，塑造深沉遠見的宗教精神力道，被史家推許為艾爾加和布瑞頓之間最重要的英國作曲家。＜第2號交響曲＞又名＜倫敦交響曲＞，雖然佛氏宣稱此乃抽象之作，學界仍認為全曲顯係對倫敦榮光的頌讚，而且四個樂章分別描寫倫敦黃昏、布魯姆斯伯瑞的喧鬧、週末夜狂歡和泰晤士河的平靜流動。佛漢．威廉士曾三度修訂此曲，本片則是1913年原始版本的世界初錄音。佛氏將這首交響曲題獻給英年早逝的作曲家布特沃斯，本片加錄布特沃斯的田園牧歌＜綠柳河岸＞做為補白，別具意義。希冠克斯的指揮充滿使命感且扣人心絃，加上24bit示範級顛峰錄音，贏得世界最高大獎，實至名歸。

A London Symphony was Vaughan Williams’s own favourite among his symphonies. It was the one he revised most often, first in 1918 – 20, then even more radically in the 1930s. What this revelatory reading demonstrates is that the twenty minutes or so of music that were excised included many passages that represent the composer at his most magically poetic. There is even a case for saying that in an age which thrives on expansive symphonies – the examples of Bruckner, Mahler and Shostakovich always before us – the original offers the richer experience. Vaughan Williams undoubtedly made the work structurally tauter, but discursiveness in a symphony is no longer regarded as necessarily a fault.

No one could have made the case for this 1913 version more persuasively than Hickox. He draws ravishing sounds throughout from the London Symphony Orchestra, with an unerring feeling for idiomatic rubato and a powerful control of massive dynamic contrasts. In this original version the first movement is the familiar one, but each of the subsequent movements here includes substantial sections completely eliminated later, some of them echoing Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloe (among these an extended one in the Scherzo). The sumptuous Chandos sound, with an extraordinarily wide dynamic range, adds to the impact of the performance, which comes with a short but valuable and beautifully played fill-up.